Why do horror Franchises have a tendency to shift towards Action?

[ROCKMAN X]

Some of the biggest Horror movies Alien&Terminator seem to have sequels that are overly action oriented devoid of any real horror,what happened to the RE4 is not something unique it seems like a common thing in horror franchises to go full on action in the sequels for some reason.

 

[Agent Spike]

Maybe to appeal to other audiences.

I don't know and it should stop. -__-

 

[Cheer]

Its always about the audience. and most of the time those audience doesn't know what they want.

 

[Flipqy42]

First off, was Terminator really considered a horror movie when it came out?

I think it kinda has to go toward action as the stakes get raised every sequel.

 

[Agent Spike]

First off, was Terminator really considered a horror movie when it came out?

I think it kinda has to go toward action as the stakes get raised every sequel.

It has some formulas of the old slashers films. For example an eerie music score and a relentless, unstoppable killer.

It's more of a Sci-Fi film with horror elements.

 

[Venomous Oddball]

They usually already have some kind of action to it, and action seems to appeal to more people. They still usually have horror somewhere in them, unless they go in a direction that's like, a kids game or movie. When you look at sales, the action games/movies usually have better sales and/or reception. The makers want to appeal to as many people as possible, both for money and so more people can enjoy what they put so much work into.

 

[cheezMcNASTY]

Well, with the Alien movies the change in pacing was mostly because of changes in directors. Each director has their own style.
Ridley Scott (Gladiator, Blade Runner, Black Hawk Down) only directed the first movie.
Second movie is James Cameron (Titanic, Avatar, Terminator, T2: Judgement Day) who tends to go for large scale action movies. Big budgets, grandiose, he gravitates towards all of that.
Third Alien movie brings the horror back, I think. David Fincher (Fight Club, Se7en, Gone Girl) is a master of suspense and it shows. For me, Alien 3 was the most suspenseful of them all. They didn't even have guns to defend themselves and the new film-making technology of the time was not wasted. Also, the way they came up with to kill an alien without weapons was pretty brilliant.

Though it is true that, in general, horror movie sequels have stepped towards action. I don't think it's so much that action has more appeal that horror is harder to sustain. It's really hard to keep something scary when you used your bag of tricks once already. It's more difficult to make a movie the audience won't see coming. Like, Friday the 13th 11 comes out, is Jason Voorhees really going to surprise anyone or are they there to see more of what they saw already?

The sequel has to add something and its easier to make that something a grander scale than a fresh and clever one.